The EPA thinks it's worth spending billions of dollars each year to reduce already minuscule amounts of mercury in the outside air. So why is it trying to shove mercury-laced fluorescent bulbs into everyone's homes?

When we were kids, if we were lucky enough to find some mercury, after watching it roll around in a blob and never separating, we'd dip nickels and dimes in it. Made ‘em quite shiny and slippery! No one died from playing with it.

7
posted on 12/23/2011 4:40:37 AM PST
by Bushbacker1
(I miss President Bush greatly! Palin in 2012! 2012 - The End Of An Error! (Oathkeeper))

I don't have an issue with the lights themselves. If people want to use them, that is their business if they want to pay the money and a manufacturer thinks they can make money by producing them. What I take issue with is government bureaucrats taking my money via confiscatory taxes, TELLING me how to spend the money they leave me, then passing legislation to DRIVE up the cost of energy so we are FORCED to spend more money to drive our cars, heat our homes and turn on our lights, whether they be incandescent or CFL. These bastards think they are doing us a big favor because they think they know best, and are trying to twist our arms to accept their utopian crap. They think if energy costs go up high enough, their plans to harness unicorn flatulence or whatever will become economically viable.

Well I don't care to take part in their damned experiments. If my town wants to purchase LED based traffic and street lights because it saves the town money and is a guaranteed return on investment, then power to them. If people want these CFL lights in the marketplace as an alternative to make their homes more energy efficient, then I think is is fine and would never say boo to anyone so inclined. Actually, my issue is not even residential lighting. Making citizens purchase stuff we don't want and don't need is NOT going to solve any kind of energy shortage. It is the equivalent of selling carbon credits or putting a magnetic sticker on the back of a car. It is Jimmy Carter wearing sweaters and telling us to turn our thermostats down.

So to make my point that forcing all of us to use these things, have to pay MORE money to buy them (even though most of us have found they don't last nearly as long as the government says they do) Here an the original unaltered graph from Livermore Labs/DOE which I think is a very, very good graphical representation (reflecting the situation in 2009):

As shown below, I cut out a part of that graph and marked it up. Of the four major sectors, residential is the second smallest using just 4.65% of generated electrical power as shown by the graph. Government statistics say lighting consumes 12% of 4.65% of electricity flowing into a house. In the inset (enlarged) part shows the 4.65% pipeline with the red stripe on it showing the lighting share, and the green stripe showing what it would be if we assume 10% efficiency compared to CFL for incandescent bulbs. (The orange pipe leading into the box signifies the RESIDENTAL SECTOR of the energy grid and is representative of energy generated from all sources)

I didn't get this image from some anti-enviroweenie website. I made it myself after analyzing the data on the graph and government data such as estimates of how much lighting uses. And it illustrates the point I make, backed up with the government's own data, that forcing us to do this via statist legislation is basically ANOTHER camel nose in the figurative tent...BECAUSE THEY CAN.

If the market really wanted these lightbulbs, they would have made it on their own without government legislation. But, in my opinion, buying into this without a fight just exacerbates this statist mess we are in covering everything from legislation against transfats and salt in the diet to the amount of water we can flush down our toilet. Liberals think this is great because it is their pet thing that they have bought hook, line and sinker, running around screaming that we are running out of energy. Surrendering to this just invites the government to intrude into EVERY facet of our life.

I don't disparage people for choosing CFL's as a stand to take. I believe I have the data (shown graphically here) to indicate that using CFL's in houses isn't going to save us from anything. It is just a piece of do-gooder legislation that only does just that...makes guilty people feel good. I readily admit that one can make an argument for commercial/industrial building codes and so on, and I might buy into it and agree, the same as I agree with towns purchasing led-based traffic lights. However, building codes are so top heavy with bureaucracy now that I would fight against mandating these in commercial use on those grounds alone.

By my home is my home. And we have gone far too long allowing the government to dictate what we can and cannot do on our own quarter acre of land, small as it is. I am sick to death of it.

12
posted on 12/23/2011 4:59:03 AM PST
by rlmorel
("A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." Winston Churchill)

I saw an article about the conditions in many of the Chinese factories where the CFL bulbs were produced... Lets just say the mercury floating around was unbelievable and the people that actually charged the glass tubes got hazard pay... not enough to make up for their inevitably going insane ... “mad as a hatter” .. The EPA has no problem with shifting hazards to areas outside the USA.

Sounds like when the inventor of the radar gun who later marketed the radar detector. Generate a market which has an expected consequence, having the solution waiting in the wings ready to launch. Double up on the income.

I have these bulbs all over my house. But, the thing is they don't last as long as an incandescent bulb in many of my fixtures. Since I have been using them I leave more lights on at night for security purposes. When I first started using them around 18 yrs ago they lasted for years. Since production has moved to China the quality has gone to he!!. There are all kind of applications where you just can't use them. I've bought various brands and none are working very well.

I’m in my later years now. As a child in the 50’s our dentist gaves us vials of mercury to play with at home. He got the mercury from processing the fillings material. We would make silver coins shiny, play with the stuff interminably and leave the open vials in our rooms when we weren’t playing with the stuff. I’m still here...no effects so far (fingers crossed). I think the EPA is overreacting a lot with an interest in advancing their control and influence.

I’m in my later years now. As a child in the 50’s our dentist gave us vials of mercury to play with at home. He got the mercury from processing the fillings material. We would make silver coins shiny, play with the stuff interminably and leave the open vials in our rooms when we weren’t playing with the stuff. I’m still here...no effects so far (fingers crossed). I think the EPA is overreacting a lot with an interest in advancing their control and influence.

Remember when we all had a mercury thermometer....and no one died....(I still have one)

Yes, and I remember when the stuff used to show up in the home now and then and we called it quicksilver. We'd take it and toss it from hand to hand and enjoyed the way it'd separate and come back together.

Not sure what it was used for, but mercury could be had easily a few decades back and no one became ill after playing with it.

There is a natural source of Mercury above a resort city near here and the river transports Mercury to a water system that distributes the water through the front range of Colorado. The radio adds tell to go to a website to hear the hazards of Mercury. Fishermen are warned how much fish they can eat to avoid too much Mercury. This is totally ignored by the liberal Ecotards.

26
posted on 12/23/2011 5:58:53 AM PST
by mountainlion
(I am voting for Sarah after getting screwed again by the DC Thugs.)

I’ve bought various brands and none are working very well...When I heard of this ridiculous ban, I immediately applied for a grant to measure the eye degradation from the years 1960 to 2050. I asked for 20 million for expenses. So far I’ve not heard from the gubbmint. They don’t care about the “chirruns”, I guess.

27
posted on 12/23/2011 6:00:56 AM PST
by Safetgiver
(I'd rather die under a free American sky than live under a Socialist regime.)

Amalgam (silver) fillings are 50 percent mercury. If you have silver fillings, you have had mercury in your mouth...and no government agency seems too alarmed. Although many dentists have transitioned to only composite fillings once the mercury issue started being discussed.

If people want these CFL lights in the marketplace as an alternative to make their homes more energy efficient, then I think is is fine and would never say boo to anyone so inclined.

When the CFL bulbs first came onto the market, my parents were early adopters...for some lamps. Their complaint was that the quality of the light was inferior because the spectrum output was so different from the "regular" light bulbs.

Then I heard an eco-tard say that you can get florescent lights with a spectrum output that mimics the sun in the afternoon (so-called 5000-K). The problem is that the colors of the furniture in our house were selected in incandescent lighting, not florescent.

What those eco-tards also forget is that the light from a CFL is not a steady light, but flickers at 120 Hz. For most people, that's not a problem. For some, though, it causes headaches and other problems. (It's why those people don't watch movies -- the double-shutter frame rate of 48 Hz isn't fast enough. TV's flicker is filtered by the reaction time of the phosphors or the LED shutters, so people sensitive to flicker can watch TV just fine.)

As for life, I've got a pile of those damn squiggly-bulbs waiting to go to Home Depot for the bulb recycling bin. Included in that pile is one, count 'em one, LED bulb that burned continuously for more than a year and a half.

I used to “play” with it. We’d buy it at the local drug store and it would be in a little bottle with a cork. You could get it out and run it around on you hand, etc. This is pure greenie BS ... I’m 70 years old, mercury didn’t bother me!

I wouldn’t expect it from Romney (if he’s the candidate), but candidate Gingrich (if he makes it that far) should start speaking of a “Coal Renaissance” under his administration, and a complete rollback of EVERY piece of anti-energy legislation and regulation that has been enacted during the Obama debacle.

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